


Firestarter

by superfluouskeys



Series: 9 Days of Fic for 900 Followers [1]
Category: Wentworth (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fluff and Angst, and it has taken me like a month, angsty smut, anyway what is this what am i doing what are tags, as you will note from the christmas references hahaha, gotta make things difficult for myself, i don't even know here we gO, just wanna write smut but i have Opinions About These Characters hahaha so, oh my gOD OKAY LISTEN, trauma processing, wanted to write these two disasters for months
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 23:18:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13421733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superfluouskeys/pseuds/superfluouskeys
Summary: Desire is tricky.  It's terrifying to want something, easier to bend to the whims of others.  Easier to be the flame than the firestarter, but twice as dangerous.  If you are the flame, you are just as easily lit as put out.





	Firestarter

**Author's Note:**

> As you may have gleaned from my nonsense tags, this proved quite a challenge for me--I have a lot of feelings about these characters clearly haha so I hope this works for someone out there!

Vera flicks the lighter and finds herself incapacitated, captivated by the flame.  A thought catches in her mind, and she doesn't know how to make sense of it.

She's not certain, suddenly, whether she's ever really felt desire.  Actively.

The desire to be seen, to be appreciated, to be desired—these things she knows in the marrow of her bones.  But to desire—to want, to reach, to do?

The flame goes out.

She thinks of Fletcher, unwillingly, an image that flashes across the backs of her eyelids, and she drops the lighter.  She's shaking all over, suddenly, and she feels sick to her stomach and has to sit down.  It's stupid, but to comfort herself, she thinks of the way the new governor mocked him so readily, the way Vera, aided by a fair amount to drink, was finally able to laugh about the whole miserable affair, finally able to untangle just a fraction of the tension building up into her chest, wrapping around her heart and wringing it dry.

Before that she'd feared she would never recover from the memory.  Now she knows there's hope, at least.

Joan Ferguson is eccentric, no doubt about that, and almost purposefully enigmatic.  But to Vera she's been like a revelation.  She doesn't pander, doesn't make nice, quite emphatically does not bother with any of the nonsense Vera has borne all her life.  She knows her own worth, assesses the value people place on things like information and prestige in a matter of seconds, and she forces people to heed her, even when they don't want to, even when they resent her for it.

And she doesn't care.

People are starting to whisper.  They she's not capable of it.  Of caring.  But Vera isn't so certain.  It's not the way normal people care, not all tied up in social convention and neurosis and the desire to be desired.  It's strange and erratic. a flame that sparks to life out of nothingness.  She offers Bea Smith a kind word, she offers Vera genuine advice, she offers Doreen Anderson the ice cream she's craving, and each instance stands out because each instance seems, for her, to exist in a sort of vacuum.

She flicks a switch and the flame comes to life.  She releases it, and it dies.

Vera retrieves her lighter from the floor, now that she's stopped shaking.

Desire—active desire—is tricky.  It's terrifying to want something, easier to bend to the whims of others.  Easier to be the flame than the firestarter, but twice as dangerous.  If you are the flame, you are just as easily lit as put out.

Vera flicks the lighter with a steadier hand this time.  She was meaning to light a candle, but it seems inconsequential, something she was just doing to fill time, a vain attempt to flood out the darkness that hangs heavy in her home.

Joan arrives exactly on time.  Vera nearly drops the lighter again when she hears the knock at the door.

She's taken her hair down, but hasn't quite smoothed it all out—it still bears the residual curve of the severe style she wears at work.  Somehow Vera finds this subtle imprecision captivating.

"I wanted to thank you properly," Vera stammers, suddenly acutely aware of the silence that's gone on an instant too long.  "Now that it's...well.  The last time you were here, it was such a mess."

Vera recalls with sudden vividness how strange Joan had been that evening.  Joan doesn't like messes, doesn't like touching people or things people have touched, yet Vera doesn't remember seeing her tense up even once that night.

"It's understandable," Joan replies in the present.  "Thank you for the invitation."  She proffers the wine she's brought with the ghost of a smile.

"I'm glad of the company," says Vera.  "It'll be my first Christmas without Mum around, and I don't really have...I mean, that's not to say I wouldn't want your company anyway—I mean, specifically, or not specifically, but—"

Joan stops her with a hand, heavy and deliberate, laid atop her forearm.  "I understand, Vera."

Vera feels it then, the flick of a lighter, warmth on her arm, ice in her veins, and desperation welling up in her lungs, and before Joan can pull her hand away, Vera places hers atop it.  Joan doesn't exactly flinch, but her eyes flicker down and back up with an intensity that very nearly causes Vera to lose her nerve altogether.

"I'm glad you're here," Vera breathes, like a secret, like she's terrified by the sound of her own voice.

Joan frowns subtly, but there's a softness about it that Vera can't parse.  The corners of her lips twitch, and she turns her hand over to take Vera's properly.

Vera wants—

Vera _wants_ , and that in itself is too much to bear.  She squeezes Joan's hand gently and withdraws hers, and focuses her attention on more tangible tasks.  Wine glasses, plates, forks, knives—strange as the past few months have been, she owes a great deal to Joan's mentorship.  More than straightforward direction, it's the certainty with which Joan handles herself that Vera longs to emulate.  Joan doesn't like messes or touching people or things people have touched, and yet she doesn't flinch.  Not here, at least.  Not now.

"So," Vera begins, more as a way to fill the silence than because she has anything useful to say.  "Any plans for the holiday proper?"

Joan is silent for a thoughtful moment.  "I'd considered getting a dog," she responds at last, and it seems such a nonsequitor that Vera pauses halfway through opening the wine.

"A dog?" she echoes, with the beginning of a smile.

Joan isn't looking at her.  She's contemplating the candle Vera has lit, just sort of standing there, looming over it.  "Hm," she replies with a slow nod.  "Goldfish are easy to care for, so I've always favoured them, but they lack something in..." she reaches out, twirls her fingers about the flame, "...emotional attachment."

Vera refocuses her attention on opening the wine bottle, uncertain of how to respond, or whether she ought to at all.

"Have you ever had pets, Vera?" Joan wonders.

Vera lets out a surprised little laugh at the thought.  "No," she says.  "Oh, I'd have loved it as a little girl, but Mum was always so demanding, I can't imagine."

She picks up the glasses and comes around the kitchen counter to offer one to Joan.

Joan nods her thanks, and inclines the glass towards her.  "And now?" she wonders.

Vera takes a sip from her glass, contemplates the empty house around her while she relishes its flavour.  "Now, I..." she begins, slowly, unsure of what she means to say even as the words come unbidden.  "Well, I don't know," she continues, and looks up at Joan with a small smile.  "I suppose I can do as I please now, can't I?"

Again the corners of Joan's lips twitch, and she regards Vera with something like perplexity.  "Cheers to that," she says quietly, after a moment.

Joan doesn't talk much over dinner, and Vera tries very hard to follow her example.  Every time she gets the urge to speak, it's all wrong and all at once, and too much.  She's reminded strikingly of her few and disastrous stints as acting governor.  She hasn't had to do much of that since Joan arrived—Joan barely takes any time off at all.

"Can I—I have a..." Vera says suddenly, attention focused upon stabbing haphazardly at her food.  "I have a question," she finishes, finally.

Joan is silent.  Vera dares a glance up to find her waiting patiently, almost eerily still.

"I mean, it's..." Vera averts her eyes again.  "You always seem so...so _sure_.  So..." she gestures vaguely.  "Deliberate."  She shakes her head, already embarrassed she's decided to speak at all.  "Were you always like that?  I mean, I..."

Vera stops short when she meets Joan's eyes, a steady, piercing gaze and the ghost of a smile upon her lips.  Vera feels strangely vulnerable, like she's asked something far more personal than she meant to, like Joan has somehow gleaned some unknowable truth about her from the content of a simple question.

Joan takes a sip of her wine thoughtfully, but she never stops looking at Vera, almost staring, studiously, and Vera finds herself too captivated to look away again.

"It's my experience," she says at last, so quietly Vera finds herself leaning in half-consciously, "that confidence is almost always an affected trait.  I've encountered very few confident people who had any reason to be."

"That...wasn't exactly an answer," Vera breathes.

One corner of Joan's lips twitches momentarily upward, and she narrows her eyes just slightly.  "I'd say it answered the question you wanted to ask," she replies.

And somehow Vera finds that she's smiling, too, even though she isn't certain she understands the game.  She averts her eyes, bites her lip when she feels something surging up inside her, the flicker of a flame brought to life, a light sparking out of nearly nothing.

"And you?" she dares, over the rim of her wine glass, and she just barely stutters.

Joan quirks one eyebrow at her.

"Is your confidence affected?"

Joan inclines her head.  "What do you think?"

Vera can't look directly at her for long, but nor can she quite look away.  "I think there's a part of me that wants to believe in both," she says, quietly and too quickly, but she's still smiling to herself, heady with the something surging through her, spurring her onward against her better judgement.  "You're so...strong, and that sort of...you know, it gives me strength, as your second in command, I guess, and..."  She traces the rim of her glass, watches the flicker of distorted candlelight.

"Then again, if you weren't just...just born you, you know, then that would mean that....well, that maybe—" she looks up, impulsively, meets Joan's dark eyes.  "Maybe someone like me could...could learn to be more like you."

Joan watches her a moment, unmoving but for the flickering candlelight reflected in her eyes.  She's looking for a deeper meaning, looking for whatever it is she can see in people that allows her to take control of whatever playing field she's stepped onto.  It would be easy to dismiss her, to say, _well, of course, Vera, you idiot, why else would I have agreed to mentor you_.  It's what anyone else would say.

But Joan isn't anyone else.

"If there's something you want, Vera," says Joan at last, barely more than a whisper, yet her voice seems to resonate in Vera's bones, "you can always ask."

Vera's heart stutters unhelpfully, and she begins to stammer.

"Or," Joan cuts her off, leans in just a little, but the change seems monumental in her stillness, "you could just..." she lingers on the _t_ , and her dark eyes scan Vera's features, "...take it."

Vera flashes hot and cold all at once.  Vera _wants_ , and she knows what she wants, and it's terrifying to want something.  Joan is challenging her, piercing and eccentric, terrifying in her own right, and Vera was asking because she wanted to know if some nebulous thing was even possible, and Joan has responded that anything, everything, is only possible if she lights the flame.

Vera stands, slowly, practically radiating panic, and Joan mirrors her movement.  Vera is stricken once more by the strangeness of her in various circumstances, how this person seems to hang somewhere in between the eccentric governor and the woman who came to Vera's home when her mother was ill, hanging back only as a thin illusion that she isn't entirely in control of the situation.

"I've never..." Vera begins, before she's fully decided to speak.  "I mean, it's always been...it was never..."  She closes her eyes, can still feel the intensity of Joan's gaze.

"It was never what I wanted...has never been," she manages.  "I..." she laughs suddenly, nervously.  "I don't even know if I've ever wanted anything, just for myself.  Except for.."  She opens her eyes, feeling hot and cold and terrified and brave.  "Until now."

Joan considers her, unmoving, with a strange softness about her that's difficult to read, but her eyes are always so intense, and Vera is positive she can't stand this torment another moment.  She advances in a nervous burst, is suddenly a bit closer than she'd intended, and tentatively, she reaches out and takes the fabric of Joan's shirt between her fingers, where it hangs loosely about her waist.  Joan's arms move, both open and away, but Joan doesn't stop her.

Vera closes her eyes, holds her breath.  It's unbearably quiet.  "Please say something," she breathes.

Joan moves so slowly it's almost like she hasn't moved at all, until suddenly Vera feels fingertips at her hairline, warm and steady and feather-light, and when she raises her head, just slightly, just to enjoy the sensation, she realizes that Joan has leaned in without her notice.

Vera inhales sharply.  Desire courses through her with the force of an electric shock, and once she recognizes it, she knows in an instant that she's never felt more than a pale imitation before.

"Is this what you want, Vera?"  Joan is so close Vera swears she can feel the words on her own lips.

"Yes," she sighs without hesitation.

This is what Vera wants, and wanting something, anything, is terrifying.

Joan's lips on hers are a force all their own.  She's trembling all over, but Joan is unnervingly steady, and so she grasps at Joan's shirt, at her sides, at her back, wills her closer, begs silently for what she's barely dared to begin.

Joan's hands travel along Vera's neck, over her shoulders and down her back, heavy and deliberate, but not quite grasping, not quite holding.  Vera's back bows, confident in the strength of the hands tracing the base of her spine, aching to deepen the kisses but lacking the sheer proximity to take what she wants with Joan looming above her.  She wraps her arms about Joan's shoulders to steady herself and Joan pulls away, brow furrowed, dark eyes positively glimmering with intent.

"Sorry, I..." the words tumble from Vera's lips without her permission, and shame washes over her in waves like nausea.  "I've never...  Am I doing all right?"

 The crease between Joan's brows deepens subtly.  She studies Vera a moment, then asks, "Are you?"

Vera closes her eyes and breathes.  She exhales sharply, pushes away unwelcome images of a handful of other experiences, each more traumatic than the last.  She inhales slowly, breathes in the soft scent from the candle, the meal and the wine, and something she supposes is Joan, clean like the smell of soap.  She nods slowly, opens her eyes and forces her shoulders to relax.

Joan is still watching her, waiting with inhuman stillness.

Vera feels herself beginning to smile.  It's a nervous, twitchy expression, but she feels it bubbling up somewhere in her chest, something she can't quite put into words.

Joan's eyes scan Vera's face, and then she mirrors the tentative twitch of a smile.

Vera tightens her grip on Joan's shoulders and pulls her into a kiss, both deeper and softer than before.  She feels Joan's hands continue their journey across the small of her back, feels herself encircled, enveloped, held, and when she withdraws it's only to catch her breath before she captures Joan's lips anew.

She feels...good, she realizes, and almost starts laughing.  Joan pulls away, something like alarm flashing in her eyes, so stark compared to her usual range of expressions that Vera is almost certain it's what she sees.

"Sorry, god, I'm sorry, I'm not..."  She shakes her head, grasps Joan's forearms and pulls gently, very nearly bumps into the table, but catches herself in time and moves around it.  Joan follows her, frowning subtly, waiting for an explanation, but she follows Vera's lead, and it's this realization that grants her the courage to try to form a coherent thought.

"I wasn't...laughing at you, or anything like that, I promise, it's..." she pauses, tries and fails to catch her breath.  "I'm laughing at myself a little, I...  And it'll sound stupid to you, it's just I've never, it's never..."

Somehow she's caught between hoping Joan will cut her off and hoping she won't.  She's expecting to be cut off, maybe.  But Joan is watching her, arms held aloft in Vera's trembling grasp, eerily still and with an expression that's hard to place, but strikes Vera as inexplicably positive.

"Never?" she presses quietly.

Vera feels her lip trembling.  "Never...felt...good.  Right."

Joan smiles then, the same small, twitchy one from before, gone as quickly as it has appeared but no less monumental for its brevity.  She moves in with purpose, kisses Vera with the same intensity that always seems to glitter in her eyes, and Vera releases one of Joan's arms to find her way against the walls of the little hallway as she leads them backwards.

She's half-certain her feet leave the floor for a few solid seconds before she falls back into her bed.

Joan is so deliberate in the way she undoes each button of Vera's blouse, eyes always darting back up to her face like she's expecting Vera to stop her.  An unwelcome image resurfaces in her mind, so bright it turns her stomach, Fletcher looming over her with liquour on his breath, pulling and pushing and—

Vera reaches for the first button of Joan's blouse with trembling hands, and she swallows the fear and the revulsion which have no place here.  With slow, shuddering breaths, with each unfastened button and the revelation of soft flesh in the dim light of the room, Vera wills the old memory away.

Vera flexes her fingers, swallows hard, dares a glance up at Joan's face, waiting, watching her, just as she expected.  She traces her fingertips hesitantly over the line of Joan's collarbone, the rise of her breast, the soft fabric of her bra, and she becomes suddenly aware of a new sensation building within herself, spreading from somewhere in her lower abdomen downward, like anxiety, or anticipation, but different, sweeter, and as Vera's hands examine the way Joan's breasts meet her ribcage, the way her ribcage meets her waist, she finds herself looking up at Joan with something quite far removed from trepidation.

Joan draws a finger across Vera's lower lip, along the curve of her jaw, then down along the line of her sternum.  She spreads her fingers over Vera's breast and squeezes, as gently as she does anything, and Vera feels that surge of sweetness course through her again, stronger, more persistent, and she gasps aloud.

She looks up to find Joan's gaze heavy-lidded, but no less intense for the change, and with a tremulous exhalation, she drags Joan down to kiss her, pushes Joan's shirt off her shoulders as she goes, and arches her back to allow Joan to hold her like before.

She feels Joan unclasp her bra and an actual, undeniable moan escapes her, muffled against Joan's lips.

Joan shifts her weight and runs a hand between them with that heavy deliberation that Vera finds so grounding, cups her breast and her waist and her hip, and trails her fingertips along the hem of Vera's underwear.  Vera inhales sharply and Joan's dark eyes snap up to meet her gaze, not quite searching for an answer so much as demanding one, and Vera finds herself at war with a fresh wave of self-loathing.

 _It's wrong, it's filthy, it's unnatural_ , she hears in her head like the voice is still real, like she didn't put an end to it by her own hand, and she knows it isn't true or at the very least she shouldn't care, but she wants to take Joan's hand and guide it further, and she wants to take Joan's hand and stop it immediately, and she finds herself trembling all over yet again, unable to do either.

The warm heaviness of the hand at her belly is gone.  Joan shifts her weight again and swipes a thumb across Vera's cheek.

"Sorry!" Vera cries suddenly.  "Oh god, sorry, sorry, I didn't—"  Unwelcome memories flood her mind afresh, all of them too loud, too bright, a handful of boys, all the same in the end, looming over her and pushing and pulling at her, ignoring or dismissing her tears, and she isn't sure which is worse now that she thinks about it, and what she'd taken for desire turning her stomach and rattling her nerves for days afterward, and woven through all of it the voices of her parents and her teachers and her friends telling her that's just the way life goes, that she ought to stop being so ungrateful and accept it.

She loathes them all suddenly, with a ferocity that threatens to unravel her.  She hates them for taking this moment from her.  She was so happy a few moments ago, a few seconds ago, so ready to rewrite her history, to flick a lighter switch and set fire to the lot of it.

"Vera."  Low, resonant, both a statement and a question.  Vera squeezes her eyes closed and scrubs at her own face.  She doesn't need to see Joan to know how she looks, the markers of her expression so subtle you'd think she didn't have one.

"God, sorry, I'm..."

Joan's hand, heavy and warm on her forehead, at least stops her hyperventilating.  Vera opens her eyes.  "Sometimes I..." she swallows, tries and fails to stay her stuttering.  "Sometimes I think it's too late for me," she manages.  She's not quite looking at Joan, but she can see her eyes glittering, studying her, seeing more than she says.  "Do you...do you ever feel...trapped, by things that happened to you?  That you...that you let happen, even though you didn't, and it wasn't..."

Vera shakes her head, lets out a shuddering sigh, unable to articulate what she means even if she could stop stammering out every other word.  Silence hangs heavy in the room, broken only by Vera's uneven breathing.

"Do you want the truth?" Joan wonders at last, and it's quieter than the sound of Vera's own heartbeat thundering in her ears.

Vera meets Joan's eyes and nods.  _You could tell me anything_ , she narrowly avoids confessing in a rush.

Joan inhales as though to speak, hesitates, traces a finger along the curve of Vera's cheek.  "I don't feel very much anymore," she says, slowly, little more than a whisper.

Vera blinks, frowns.  Remembers the way Fletcher spat 'fucking psychopath' once in the break room when she'd just walked out.  Remembers what Joan said earlier, twirling fingers about the flame of a candle.  That she likes keeping fish, but they lack something in emotional attachment.

"People...misunderstand...what they see."  Joan's lip twitches, and she continues to trail the tips of her fingers downward, along the line of Vera's neck and over her collarbone.  "They call me a monster."  Her lip twitches again, a brief, mirthless smile, and she meets Vera's gaze.  "Only a monster doesn't feel.  But I've met countless men excused, _revered_...for a disposition far colder than mine."

Joan turns her hand over and brushes the backs of her fingers against Vera's cheek.  Vera realizes she'd holding her breath.

"Do you think I'm a monster, Vera?"

Vera shakes her head, feels her brow furrow.  "No," she says.  "Of course not."

Something about Joan softens subtly, or perhaps Vera has imagined it, but she averts her gaze, watches the path she's tracing with her fingers.  "Sometimes I wonder," she says. 

Vera reaches up, with a hand that's unsteady, but no longer trembling, and tries to mirror the way Joan caressed her face.  "Could we...I mean..."  Her fingertips find Joan's hairline and she feels herself beginning to smile again.  She didn't expect Joan's hair to be soft.  "Would you...mind," she continues, doesn't even care that she stutters, "if we tried again?"

The look Joan gives her then is like nothing Vera has ever experienced.

It's not a look she recognizes, not something she could associate with any particular feeling, not even something she could describe, yet she's certain in that moment that she understands it.

Joan envelopes her, kisses her with renewed passion and a warmth that spreads through her chest all the way down to her toes, reignites that sweet, creeping anticipation that starts in her abdomen and edges ever lower, and this time when Joan's fingers find the band of her underwear, Vera leans into the touch.

Joan turns her hand over and slides it beneath the band.  She withdraws to watch Vera's face, and Vera affixes her gaze somewhere along the line of Joan's shoulder and bites her lip, sure she couldn't take the full force of Joan's eyes upon her.

But when Joan's fingers find the wetness between Vera's legs, she lets out a small sound, a breathless little, "huh," and Vera can't help but to look up.  Joan is watching her just as she expected, but it's with a muted kind of fascination.  Vera realizes she's been holding her breath, but before she can force herself to exhale, Joan's hand travels lower, and she brushes her thumb over Vera's clit.

Vera keens.

She's distantly aware she ought to feel very embarrassed.  It's like she's never been touched before in her life.  But there's a curious kind of satisfaction in Joan's expression now, the certainty she admired before anything else, and as sure as Vera was a moment ago that she couldn't bear to see Joan watching her, now, as Joan curls a finger inside of her, and it feels like nothing she's ever known before, Vera knows she cannot bear to look away.

Vera can count the number of orgasms she's had on one hand, could probably specifically remember each instance if the notion weren't so depressing.  It was always by herself—a desperate, guilty thing late at night when the house and Vera's own treacherous mind managed to be silent at the same time—and to imagine such a thing with another person always seemed laughable to her.  That she should feel herself getting so close so quickly seems like it shouldn't be possible.

"I'm—oh god, I'm..." she stammers, breathless, and before she can form a full thought, she's all but lost.  There's something about the weight of Joan's hand, the impossible steadiness of her rhythm, and the intensity of her eyes, that cannot be denied.  Vera cries out, feels her whole body contract, grasps at Joan's shoulders, feels release coursing through her, desire building impossibly, unbearably higher as Joan continues at her impossibly, unbearably measured pace until Vera pushes her hand away with something between a moan and a sob.

Vera is shattering, shivering, falling apart and falling together.

Joan's hand finds purchase in her hair.  She smoothes it away from Vera's face, draws strands slowly between her fingers and arranges them across the pillow, and gradually, Vera returns to herself.

She looks up at Joan with something like distant wonder.  Joan draws another strand of her hair between her fingers slowly and it sends soothing tingles coursing through her.  She wills herself to exhale, to relax her shoulders, to close her eyes.  For a few moments, her mind goes blissfully blank.

"Is this what you wanted, Vera?" Joan asks her, quietly, and, Vera realizes vaguely, lacking the edge of mockery that the previous inquiry bore.

"Yes," Vera breathes, and feels a sleepy smile tugging at the corners of her lips.  She opens her eyes. "What do you want, Joan?" she asks, before she has time to second-guess herself.

Joan lets out a small huff, shakes her head slowly as she contemplates Vera.  She touches her fingers to her own chest, taps where her heart would be.  "I...feel," she says.  "Felt.  That's..."

Her lips twitch into the faintest glimmer of a smile, monumental in its brevity.

"That's more than enough."


End file.
